Core Record

Loutherbourg, Philip James de (French painter and scenographer, 1740-1812, active in Great Britain)

Date

1797 (dated)

Signed

yes

Description

This painting and its pair, Jesus Betrayed were commissioned as part of a London based publishing venture by Thomas Macklin, begun c. 1790 and completed in 1800. Macklin employed twenty different artists and fifteen different engravers to translate their work into engraving for his six volume Holy Bible. De Loutherbourg's dramatic compositions illustrate the beginnings of the Romantic movement in Britain.

Current Accession Number

1982P44

Former Accession Number

P.44´82

Inscription

front lr 'P.J. de Loutherbourg RA 1797'

Subject

religion (Christ at Emmaus)

Measurements

127.5 x 101.2 cm cm (estimate)

Material

oil on canvas

Acquisition Details

Purchased with the aid of the National Art-Collections Fund and the V & A Purchase Grant Fund 1982.

On top member of stretcher 'CK 90' dealer's stencil. T. S. R. Boase writing of de Loutherbourg's contributions to Macklin's The Holy Bible has said: 'No other group of paintings exemplify so clearly the early stages of the Romantic Movement in England'.

Engraved by James Fittler, 1798 and published in vol .5 of Macklin's Bible. Letter in file from Ellis Waterhouse: 'Joseph Houlton sounds like a very probable purchaser.' The Houltons built their neo-Gothic Farleigh house nearby in the first decade of the 1800s. Joseph Houlton Esq, Furleigh was a subscriber to Macklin's Bible. Another, smaller, earlier version of this subject was sold by Madame Basan in Paris, 4 April 1791.